Anton Mauve, 'Watering Horses', 1871

A young boy is riding a horse and leading another one. The horses have stopped in a pool of water, possibly the banks of a stream, and are about to start drinking. They are working horses and both seem tired, perhaps after a hard day’s work. The muted colours of the painting suggest that it might be evening, with the sun starting to set. The boy’s cap, blue shirt and neckerchief were typical for Dutch farmworkers in the nineteenth century. Although it is possible to make out a town on the horizon to the right, the scene is quiet and serene. Apart from the boy and the horses, there are only a few birds flying over the trees to the left of the work.

The landscape may be Oosterbeek near Arnhem, in the east of the Netherlands, where the Dutch artist Anton Mauve was living in 1871. Oosterbeek has been called the Dutch Barbizon, because it attracted painters such as Jozef Israëls and Willem Maris, who formed an art colony there. They wanted to paint outside and to capture as accurately as possible the landscapes they depicted. Many of the artists that were part of the Oosterbeek School would form other artists’ groups, most notably The Hague School, of which Mauve was a key participant.

Here, Mauve employed broad brushstrokes and impasto in the clouds and the water to try and recreate natural light effects. He wanted to give viewers the feeling of being in the landscape itself. Mauve was determined to paint realistic landscapes and often included animals in his pictures. The work of the French artist Jean-François Millet was an important influence on Mauve, especially his use of a limited palette of subdued colours, in particular greys, browns and greens, as can be seen in this painting.

Mauve was born in Zaandam in 1838. He studied under Pieter Frederik van Os and Wouter Verschuur, from who he learnt to paint animals. His earliest works were in an academic style with a high finish and a bright palette. However, his mature style was formed through his experiences in the Oosterbeek School. He was a successful artist with patrons across Europe and the USA.